Flash in the Pan
by Rargamonster
Summary: The two brothers fled, leaving everything behind, to escape a danger unknown to Emil. They make their way to California, land of outlaws and fortune seekers, to make a new life in a time of unbounded opportunity – but then a quiet, mysterious young merchant catches Emil's eye. HongIce, DenNor, Gold Rush AU.
1. Chapter 1

**Flash in the Pan**

**Chapter One**

_New York City, Autumn, 1847_

Emil woke from a deep sleep in a panic – a hand was pressed over his mouth. He thrashed, trying to throw the foreign arm off of him, only to be shushed hurriedly. The noise calmed him, barely enough to stop his flailing in bed and to recognize who was holding him down.

It was only Lukas, though that realization didn't really clear up much. Emil shook his head at his brother, as if to ask why the hell he was waking him up in the dead of night, but Lukas only gave him a blank stare for a long moment, drawing his hand away only when he was sure Emil wouldn't make any noise.

"We're leaving. Don't talk," Lukas muttered into his ear, barely audible in the silence of night, "I've packed your clothes. You have two minutes to grab anything else you want. Nothing big."

"What?" Emil mouthed silently to his brother, but Lukas didn't answer, only stared at the clock pointedly.

He must be serious about this. Biting his tongue, Emil detangled himself from the sheet, pulled a shirt on and waved at Lukas to get going. There was nothing important to him in their little tenement; anything that might have once held sentimental value to him had been left behind when they emigrated from Iceland years ago, and was now nothing but a distant memory.

Lukas grabbed a small bag that held their savings and some extra clothing, and they tiptoed across the cramped living area, slipping outside into the hall.

As they crept down the stairs, Emil hissed, "Now will you tell me what the hell is going on?"

"We're leaving. I found us work – hard work, but better than the factory."

"What kind of work?" Emil was categorically suspicious of any _work_ that required them to creep out of their building long before the dawn, long before the city began to come to life.

"Sailing."

He stopped dead in the street.

"Come on, Emil. We have to keep moving."

"No. Are you crazy? I'm not getting back on another ship. Not for anything."

"We have to," Lukas repeated, grabbing Emil by the arm and dragging him along the street.

"Have you forgotten how horrible it was coming here in the first place? Trapped below deck, in a cramped, smelly, seasick _hell? _ I won't do that again."

"_We have to_," Lukas glanced back over his shoulder at his brother, "We can't stay here."

"Why not?"

"It's not safe for us anymore."

"Not safe? Why?"

Lukas didn't answer, only started to walk faster, and Emil had to jog to keep up.

"_Why?_ Why isn't it safe?" Still no answer. "What about Mathias, then? We're just going to leave him?"

"He'll be safer if we leave. He's better off without us," came the hoarse whisper, almost lost in the empty streets.

"We're just _leaving_ him," Emil muttered in disbelief.

"I wrote him a letter. Explaining."

"Well, _that_ makes it all better," he said, sardonic and bitter.

There was silence for a time, save for their hurried footsteps.

"Where are we going, anyway?"

* * *

_San Francisco, Early Spring, 1848_

They had been sailing alongside the rolling hills of the California coast for a few days, and Emil was getting impatient for their journey to come to an end. They were so close he could taste it - he longed to be back on solid ground again.

It wasn't like the journey had been _pleasant_, exactly, but he did have a bit more freedom now as a hired hand than he had as a small child on the crossing from Europe. He was constantly out in the sea air, under the hot sun that had bleached his already-light hair to a pale, bone white. There was always work to be done, and he was always moving; his small, thin body had been wracked with a perpetual burning soreness the for the first few weeks of hard labor, but even then, he had barely had enough free time to think about it between waking up in the morning, being ordered about all day, and collapsing into exhausted slumber at night. In any case, the pain had long since faded as his body toughened up, developing firm, rippling muscle under skin toned and callused by wind and weather.

By now, it was all routine – his wobbly legs having adjusted to the constant pitch and roll of the deck beneath his feet, and his mind trained to ignore the terror of climbing around to work up in the rigging, hundreds of feet above the wood of the deck. One slip-up, and he would be dead, he knew. He mostly tried not to think about it.

A shout from below snapped his attention back to the task at hand, and Emil resumed his work, securing the ropes that adjusted the height of the sails. There was a strong enough wind behind them that would carry the ship into the bay, even with the sails only half-unfurled.

When he finished, he scurried back down to the deck to help the rest of the crew prepare the ship for docking. Almost before he realized it, Lukas was working quietly beside him.

"Stay close to me after we land," he muttered under his breath.

Emil nodded.

Once the ship had docked, there was a frenzy of activity as passengers departed, sailors and dock workers unloaded and delivered cargo to waiting merchants, and the ship's officers struggled to keep order amongst the chaos – dispensing wages to the sailors, renewing contracts, "negotiating" with patrons waiting at the docks. Emil stuck close by Lukas' side as they collected their pay for the journey and slipped into the confused crowd.

"We need to get away from here without the captain or any of the officers seeing us," Lukas' voice was barely audible over the many loud, scattered discussions and arguments breaking out around the pair, "Stay calm. Act natural. We're going to meet up with Mr. Bonnefoy – I agreed that we'd help him load up his goods for transport out of the city, and that's a good enough opportunity to get out of here."

"Are you going to bother telling me why we need to get away without anyone seeing us?" Emil asked; he was growing tired of his brother's recent tendency towards keeping strange secrets. No matter how many times he had asked about their sudden departure from New York, Lukas was strangely evasive, refusing to give any kind of answer beyond vague hintings about danger.

"In order to get passage, I had to sign a contract saying we would work the return trip as well," Lukas explained, as if it was a minor detail he had neglected to mention.

Emil groaned, "Why couldn't you have said anything sooner?"

"I had it under control."

Emil glared back in response, opening his mouth to snap back at his brother, when he was interrupted by a shout –

"Hey! Where are you two off to?"

Lukas didn't even glance back, shoving Emil along even as he tried to turn to see what was going on behind.

"Run," he hissed.

* * *

The brothers darted through the city streets – if this place could even rightfully be called a city. It was nothing compared to New York, and that made Emil nervous. He knew the two of them were much faster than the men chasing them, but he also knew that they couldn't run forever.

And, by process of elimination, they were rapidly running out of places to hide.

They paused in a quiet alleyway for a moment, to catch their breaths and attempt to come up with a new plan of attack.

"Got everything under control, do you?" Emil huffed, leaning against the wall behind him.

"If you still have the breath to criticize me, you haven't been running hard enough," Lukas snapped back, resting against the other building.

"Same goes for you."

Someone coughed from behind Emil, and he flinched forward with a start, stumbling to get away from whoever had been standing there quiet enough not to be noticed… Lukas caught him by the back of his shirt before left the relative cover of the alleyway in his panic; he looked suspicious of, but not particularly worried by, the other person present. Emil turned slowly to see who it was.

It was a young man who looked to be of a similar age, though it was difficult for Emil to tell; he was a bit preoccupied by the fact that he was being blatantly stared at, the dark emotionless eyes locking with his own pale blue ones. It was unnerving, to say the least, with the way he stood there, still and silent as a statue, his gaze fixed on Emil as if studying him, searching for something…

The commotion following them in the streets was getting closer, and the other man's eyes flickered to the streets that lay beyond the little gap between the buildings they were standing in. He took a hesitant step back, then turned quickly to open a narrow door leading into one of the buildings. He held it open, motioning for the brothers to go inside.

Emil looked back at Lukas for direction, not yet trusting this man they had just run into (almost literally), but not knowing what else they could do to escape their pursuers; Lukas' eyes warily flicked back and forth between _him_ and the open door…

The noise of the hunt was getting closer. The young man waved more urgently at them, a flash of an emotion Emil couldn't name passing through his gaze in the space of a blink before it vanished again into impassiveness –

And then Lukas had made his decision, and Emil was being pushed towards the open doorway, towards those eerily blank eyes.

* * *

A/N:

A couple historical notes (most of this information is either remembered from grade school or looked up on Wikipedia; I do not claim to be in any way an expert on history):

Gold was discovered in early 1848 in the American River, and since it took a while for information to travel in those days, people from the East coast or from other countries didn't hear news of gold until late summer/early autumn 1848, and didn't start arriving en masse until 1849, hence the term 49ers. It was the Gold Rush that really started attracting population to California. San Francisco was a very small "city" at the time, more of a port town than anything, but that all started changing as people rushed to the area.

Chinese immigrants began to come to America in the 1820s, but there were very few of them until the Gold Rush – for purposes of this story, we'll say that Hong Kong (and China) were among the first to come over.

More in the next chapter, I guess.

A couple of non-historical notes:

Holy crap, I don't know what I'm doing writing this xD I know nothing about the Western genre, I don't know where I got the idea of Western!_HongIce_ of all things, and I don't have a solid plot worked out for this yet. So many things are undecided at this point, but this just needed to come out. I'm rating it T for now, but that may change in the future.

As always, reviews/alerts/favorites are received with much love~


	2. Chapter 2

**Flash in the Pan**

**Chapter Two**

Emil stumbled towards the open door, felt the stranger's hand close around his arm, watched a brief, tense nervousness flash over that stoic face. Then he was being tugged inside, and Lukas was following hurriedly after them, and the door shut with a swift, sharp click as soon as the three of them were in the building.

They stood just inside the doorway, absolutely still and silent, listening for something to happen on the other side of the door. All too quickly, footsteps were coming closer, murmured voices conferring, and it seemed that they lingered outside in the alleyway for an eternity.

Finally, someone shouted, "Not here," and the footsteps retreated, and Emil had to remind himself to breathe again.

The three of them relaxed visibly, and Emil finally had a moment to take in their surroundings; they were in what looked to be the cramped back room of some sort of general goods store, squeezed into the narrow aisles between stacks of crates filled with merchandise – some manufactured goods shipped in from the east coast, a bit of local produce, but most of the boxes Emil could only assume came from abroad. Many of the shipping labels were written in a language that was indecipherable to his eyes, and he briefly wondered what could be inside.

Those thoughts quickly disappeared as footsteps approached from beyond the maze of boxes and crates. Emil tensed, realized that the stranger (their rescuer?) was still holding onto his arm, and jerked away, backing up towards the door again – the other man glanced over at him, thick eyebrows furrowed into the slightest expression of bewilderment that faded away as the footsteps drew nearer.

When he finally turned his head away and Emil was no longer being scrutinized by those strangely calm eyes, he felt a wave of relief wash over him – it had been uncomfortably awkward to be stared at like that – but also a sense of disappointment. Loss.

Some small part of his brain hadn't minded it, hell, maybe had even liked being close to this man he had only just met, who he knew nothing about… He shouldn't be thinking these things. It was wrong, it was inappropriate, and he didn't even know where all of this had come from – he shook his head to clear it.

The footsteps had revealed themselves to be another man, shorter, his long hair tied back in a ponytail. Emil couldn't understand the words he said, but the way he spoke made it clear that he was irritated. Lukas was watching, his lips curled in a small display of amusement at the bickering before them, but Emil could tell he was apprehensive about all this.

Well, that made two of them. Emil kicked Lukas' foot to get his attention and nodded at the door, and they had only just started to inch backwards out of this uncomfortable situation when a voice addressed them, in English.

"You shouldn't go out that way. They are still looking for you."

It was the one with the ponytail, the more expressive one. The other was still standing quietly, still staring.

"They came through the front of the shop, looking for you two," he continued, "It would be best to stay here, until they are done. So. Who are you, and what is it you did?"

"Lukas, and my brother, Emil. We took the easy way out of a contract," Lukas answered, careful to be as vague as possible.

It didn't quite seem to work. The other man scoffed, "So you two are… What're they called, gold-diggers? I thought there would at least be a few more months before we started to be overrun."

Emil had no idea what he was talking about, but both he and Lukas kept their mouths shut, wanting to get out of here more than they wanted to argue.

"I am Yao Wang, as you Westerners say, and this is my brother Jia Long. You can wait here until it's safe to leave. Whatever you two are up to. I have to get back to the shop."

He left, and it was quiet again. There was a moment where Jia Long opened his mouth as if he wanted to say something, but he didn't, instead motioning for them to stay while he slipped back outside momentarily.

"What the _hell_ did you get us into?" Emil asked Lukas, furious, as soon as they were alone again.

He didn't have a chance to answer before the door creaked open a crack again, and Jia Long was beckoning them outside. The streets were again filled with the normal murmur and bustle of everyday life – no shouting voices, no pounding footsteps chasing after them.

Jia Long saw them to the end of the alleyway and let them go with a slight incline of his head. Then Lukas was leading him away, and they started to circle back around the city, back towards the stagecoach station where they would meet Mr. Bonnefoy.

Emil couldn't stop himself from looking back before they turned a corner and disappeared from sight. Jia Long was still standing there, perfectly still by the edge of the building, watching them walk away. The corner of his mouth quirked up in a little smirk as their eyes met, and Emil felt his face burning –

"Keep walking," Lukas snapped.

He didn't look back again.

* * *

They stood hidden again in an alleyway, quietly cursing to themselves at their bad luck. They had found Mr. Bonnefoy, but they had also found the captain.

"I know you have something to do with those two boys disappearing on me, frog," Captain Kirkland was saying, "I won't stand for it."

"Spare me the dramatics," the Frenchman said, ironically, with a dramatic edge to his voice and gestures, "What involvement would I want with a couple of runaways?"

"Damned if I know. But I _know_ you're involved, somehow. You're always coming up with new ways to get under my skin."

"I think you've gotten a bit _too _paranoid. Even I'm not out to get you all the time. I have more important things to attend to, if you will excuse me…?"

The captain crossed his arms stubbornly.

Francis sighed, "That means _go away._"

The man grumbled something that Emil couldn't quite decipher and grudgingly walked away.

"You two can come out now," Mr. Bonnefoy said, once the captain was out of hearing range, and Lukas and Emil sheepishly slunk out of their hiding place. "You don't have to explain just now," he cut them off before they could make any excuses, "I want to get on the road. I don't want to have to spend the night here." He looked around at the little city, a grimace of distaste clear on his face.

They loaded up the rented stagecoach with the cargo – hundreds of young plants packed closely in dirt. They were particularly ugly, like long twigs poking up into the sunlight, young light green leaves only recently sprouting off the top. They were grapevines, the Frenchman had explained to him one slow day up on deck; cuttings taken from his family's vineyards in southern France. Thankfully, they all seemed to have survived the long journey, probably due in no small part to the freer range of the ship Mr. Bonnefoy had been allowed over the other passengers.

Not for the first time, Emil wondered who exactly Mr. Bonnefoy was – from the start, he could often be seen above deck sunning the little plants, which was highly unusual for a passenger on a cargo ship. He stayed out of the way of the sailors for the most part, but when activity was slower, he would joke with the deckhands or provoke the captain into arguments with no repercussions.

Emil suspected that he was wealthy and heavy-handed with the bribes. Or he was blackmailing the captain. Or both, he supposed.

Before long, the three of them were crammed into the front of the coach, the back filled with carefully packed plants, and they were rolling and bumping their way around the bay.

"So, I imagine you have an excuse prepared for why you were hiding from the dear captain?" Mr. Bonnefoy asked smoothly. He sat, somehow still poised and elegant, in the carriage, as Lukas and Emil jostled into each other with every bump in the road.

They exchanged a look. No, they hadn't come up with an excuse. But it didn't seem like it would matter, since Francis had started to laugh at the two of them, not seeming upset about it in the least.

"No matter. I understand the desire to get away from Captain Kirkland. Don't know how that man has ever been able to keep hands on permanently," he muttered, "And I can't begrudge you two wanting a bit more… adventure than you would have seen on that ship. Especially with all the excitement that has been kicking up lately."

When he didn't elaborate, Emil asked, "What excitement do you mean?"

"You have not heard?" he arched an elegant eyebrow at them in a (slightly overdone) expression of shock, "But the excitement has been buzzing around town since we landed. Oh, but I suppose you have been too busy running around to appreciate the value of good news." He leaned closer to the two brothers, and whispered (loudly and conspiratorially over the clatter of the stagecoach), "_Gold_ has been discovered. In the American river."

"…And?" Lukas asked, unimpressed.

"But, ah, dear boy! You do not realize the significance of this?"

Lukas simply stared back, expression impassive.

"They say that in certain parts, one can simply pluck pebbles of pure gold up off the ground! Just lying there, rich for the taking! A man in the market spoke of a nugget the size of his fist," he elaborated, clearly expecting them to be dazzled by the news.

It was not so. "People exaggerate," Lukas shrugged.

"They do," Francis conceded, "But even if this is an exaggeration, it would still be quite easy to make a small fortune mining."

They nodded to that, pondering.

Emil spoke up, "But you're not interesting in mining gold, are you?"

"No," Mr. Bonnefoy said with a shake of his head, "I've had my fill of adventure, and I've learned to appreciate the quieter pleasures in life. Art. Beauty. Good friends, good food, and _excellent_ wine. Though it will be many years before these," he nudged one of the crates with his foot, "produce good quality. But the process of refining and perfecting is part of what makes the art so beautiful, no?"

Emil nodded again. He could see that.

After a stretch of silence, the Frenchman sighed, "You two are so _quiet._ So, what brings you out West in the first place?"

_This again._ Emil decided, as usual, that he would let Lukas answer.

"Didn't like living in the big city or working in the factories. Missed seeing the sky, behind all the soot and smoke."

"A strange reason to uproot yourselves from your home and wander the Wild West," Mr. Bonnefoy said with an enigmatic smile.

"New York was never our home."

"You two are not looking for adventure or money. You don't have any particular plans. You don't seem like the type to be violent criminals trying to escape the law. So, I wonder… What is it you are running away from?"

Lukas stiffened in his seat, and Emil watched him curiously.

"You don't have to tell me. I think I can guess what it is you're running from, and what you've left behind. I have a sense for this sort of thing, you know."

"Then I'll thank you to keep quiet on the matter."

"Oh, you don't have to worry about me. I understand the, ah, unique position you are in."

"Good."

The coach fell silent again, as Emil wondered what the hell had just happened.

* * *

Notes:

Er, not terribly much for this chapter. I promise Hong Kong will talk eventually, he's just being a stubborn, difficult, and awkward teenager with a crush at the moment. Oh, ages – I think Hong Kong and Iceland are about 17-ish at the moment. Norway is probably early-mid twenties. Everyone else is a little older, late twenties, maybe?

And I figured out a plot! Finally! Though I feel like I should mention up front that this plot kind of necessitates a very slight deviation from strict historical accuracy – it'll be very subtle, though, so please don't be alarmed xD The overall story might end up being about 10-12 chapters long? No promises on that, though, since I often find that the actual writing of something tends to expand and contract like crazy, depending on how the characters are writing themselves.

Thank you all so much for the great response to last chapter – I wasn't even expecting anyone to click on this weird-ass AU, much less all the positive feedback I got. You've all made me a very happy writer :) As always, I greatly appreciate reviews/alerts/favorites~

(Also: Captain Kirkland xD I seriously hope there's a Star Trek crossover out there somewhere. …In which Captain Kirkland of the USS Enterprise goes into pirate mode, flips Starfleet the bird, and takes his crew off gallivanting the universe and looting people for the hell of it. Oh god, this needs to exist xD)


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